Birmingham-Southern College honored the 2019 Alumni Award recipients during the festivities of homecoming weekend.

The Distinguished Alumni awards recognize alumni who have achieved outstanding success in their chosen professions. This year, the College awarded the distinction to Dr. Robert Bottoms ’66 and Sandy Thurmond ’84. The 2019 Outstanding Young Alumni Award honorees were Kelley Brooks Simoneaux ’07 and Kindred Motes ’12, and Graham Spencer ’16 was recognized as the 2019 Rising Star honoree. The awards were presented at the Alumni Awards Brunch on Saturday, Oct. 19, in Bruno Great Hall of the Norton Campus Center.

2019 Distinguished Alumni Award honorees:

Dr. Bob Bottoms ’66 – The longest serving president of DePauw University, Bottoms followed a path of service as he worked as BSC chaplain and assistant to the president. He worked as assistant professor of church and ministry at Vanderbilt University until 1978, when he began as vice president for university relations at DePauw University. Bottoms was named president of the university in 1986, where he would stay until 2008.

Under Bottoms’ leadership at DePauw University, applications to the university doubled, student diversity increased from 3.5 percent to 16 percent, endowment increased five-fold, and minority faculty members increased from 3 percent to 17 percent. In 2000, he received the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Chief Executive Leadership Award. The Posse Foundation of New York named Bottoms one of only three “Posse Stars” in 2004. He has served on the boards of the Posse Foundation in New York City, Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Chicago, the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, and the Center for Leadership Development in Indianapolis.

Sandy Thurmond ’84 – As the current Vice President of Primary Care Services for Children’s of Alabama, Thurmond is responsible for the operations and development of its primary care network and for maintaining relationships with pediatricians throughout Alabama. She began working with Children’s primary care network at the time of its creation in 1995, and has since grown the program to 13 offices located around Alabama, serving around 350,000 patients. After graduating from Birmingham-Southern, Thurmond attended graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Thurmond is a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and is a member of the Medical Group Management Association. She serves on the boards of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama, the Omicron Delta Kappa Society and Educational Foundation, and Birmingham-Southern College. She serves on the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women initiative, the United Way of Central Alabama’s Women United Advisory Group, and was the 2018-2019 president of the BSC Alumni Board. She is a past president of the Alabama Healthcare Executives Forum and served three years on the National Chapters Committee of the American College of Healthcare Executives. She has served on the boards of the Kiwanis Club of Metropolitan Birmingham, VSA Alabama, and Alabama Healthcare Executives Forum. In 2019, Thurmond was recognized by UAB’s Commission on the Status of Women as the Outstanding Woman in the Community honoree.

2019 Outstanding Young Alumni Award Honorees:

Kelley Brooks Simoneaux ’07 – At age 16, an accident involving a negligent driver and faulty seatbelt left Simoneaux a paraplegic due to a spinal cord injury. Simoneaux did not let this injury slow her down.  The native Tennessean landed on the Hilltop after high school and earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Birmingham-Southern. She graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 2010, where she was president of the Student Bar Association. After working as an attorney representing people following catastrophic injuries due to defective products, Simoneaux moved to Washington, D.C., where she founded The Spinal Cord Injury Law Firm, PLLC, which focuses on representing individuals following spinal cord injuries. When she is not in the courtroom, Simoneaux is advocating and fighting for the rights of people with disabilities. After being denied an Uber ride in 2018 because of her wheelchair, Simoneaux began the advocacy campaign Wheel2Ride to direct policy changes regarding the inclusion of individuals with mobility disabilities in using ride sharing platforms. In the community, Simoneaux serves on the board of directors for the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia which facilitates independent living opportunities for people with disabilities and the Wheels of Happiness Foundation which provides medical supplies in third world countries for individuals with disabilities. She also serves on multiple advisory boards focused on disability rights for various government agencies in the Washington, D.C., area.

Kindred Motes ’12 – Following graduation from Birmingham-Southern, Motes served in the Episcopal Service Corps in North Carolina, where his efforts funded arts education for Durham schoolchildren. He then moved to the United Kingdom for his master’s degree at the University of Essex. He worked in London with human rights organization REDRESS, attending the first Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict as a representative. Motes has also worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center and at the United Nations, where he led campaigns for a coalition of many organizations, including Amnesty International. Since 2016, Motes has worked at the Vera Institute of Justice as digital strategy director, where he leads a team of four. In 2018, he led the campaign #SaveLOP, garnering support from many notable politicians and national organizations. Motes’ editorial work has been published or featured in TIME magazine, The New York Times, POLITICO, The Birmingham News, and The Decatur Daily. He serves as a board member of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights’ Young Leaders Program, and joined the board of directors for the ACLU of Alabama last month. He was featured as an outstanding alumnus in the University of Essex’s Department of Government prospectus in 2018.

2019 Rising Star Award Honoree:

Graham Spencer ’16 – Graham Spencer ’16 is a fourth-generation alumnus of Birmingham-Southern. He followed in the footsteps of his parents, Amelia Gunn Spencer ’85 and Brad Spencer ’86; his grandparents, Betty ’60 and Bill Gunn ’59; and his aunt and uncle, Catherine Gunn Walker ’89 and Clete Walker ’90, all who met on the Hilltop. After graduation, he joined the Washington, D.C. office of the research/consulting firm, Education Advisory Board (EAB) as an associate. He now serves as a director, working primarily to develop and foster relationships between EAB and four-year institutions of higher education. In his second year at EAB, he co-founded and launched EAB’s global research partnership, designed to serve tuition-driven institutions in a more centralized fashion. Throughout his time at EAB, he has worked with many different presidents and cabinets, providing best-practice research, consulting, and direct marketing to help schools solve their issues surrounding enrollment, advancement, student success, policy reformation, etc. When he chooses to relax in his new home of Brooklyn, he enjoys running Spartan races, reading biographies that will one day serve as paper weights, and smoking pork shoulder with his vegan fiancée (Ashley Bice ’15, gradually worn down for a first date by a persistent freshman – Graham).